


Genuine Question

by Wisteria_Leigh



Series: Prompted Works [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One Shot, Sickfic, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-03 19:09:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16331846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wisteria_Leigh/pseuds/Wisteria_Leigh
Summary: Ronan knew Adam hadn’t been sleeping well. Knew that he was spending more time studying, more time working, more time stressing about all the things Adam Parrish usually stressed about. Knew that Adam needed to spend his fall break actually relaxing for once in his life. Knew he needed much longer than 4 days to recover from the brutal first half of sophomore year.And yet.Adam had picked up hours at Boyd’s. Because of fucking course he did.





	Genuine Question

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by an anon on tumblr: "hi, it would be super cool for a fic prompt to have pynch w/ a sick or hurt or exhausted (your pick) adam who is being stubborn about it and ronan who is not having adam working himself to death"

They had fought. **  
**

Not a bad fight. Not a knock-down, drag-out argument like Adam and Gansey used to have. But bad enough that Ronan had needed to rip apart some back roads at 100mph for a while. And when he came back, Adam and his Hodoyota was gone.

And Ronan had definitely kicked a tree. Or three.

Adam has been feeling off all day. He denied it, of course, but Ronan could see it in the way his brow knit together when he swallowed, how it was taking him longer to read each page of the textbook, how he curled in on himself when they were sitting on the couch, how the dark circles under his eyes seemed more like bruises today than normal.

Ronan knew he hadn’t been sleeping well. Knew that he was spending more time studying, more time working, more time stressing about all the things Adam Parrish usually stressed about. Knew that Adam needed to spend his fall break actually relaxing for once in his life. Knew he needed much longer than 4 days to recover from the brutal first half of sophomore year.

And yet.

Adam had picked up hours at Boyd’s. Because of fucking course he did.

Ronan tried to convince him not to go: “Don’t be a shithead and pull the stick out of your ass for once.” Which, in retrospect, maybe wasn’t the best approach.

There was yelling (Ronan), glaring (Adam), thoughts poorly translated into words (Ronan), and thoughts articulated into projectile weapons that landed with too much precision (Adam).

And now Ronan was cruising at a far less illegal speed through the cold, autumn rain to Boyd's where, to the surprise of literally no one, Ronan found Adam tucked under a car.

Adam knew he was probably on the precipice of a cold. He had learned over the years that exhaustion had many forms, and the sort he felt now was that energy-sapping, headache-inducing kind that usually preceded a few miserable days stuck in bed. But he had promised Boyd some hours over break, and he needed to be saving up money for next year when he moved from dorms to off-campus housing, and he just wasn’t getting as many work hours this semester with his overloaded course schedule and too many new hires at the library circulation desk.

And he was really not in the mood to fight again.

Yet in stormed Ronan Lynch, shaking the rainwater off his black leather jacket and marching to Adam’s current project.

Ronan shoved his hands into his pockets with a huff, hooked the toe of his boot under the creeper, and yanked. Adam rolled out from under the car without resistance.  

“The hell, Lynch,” Adam groaned, squinting against the ceiling lights as he raised himself onto his elbows.

“Funny. I was going to ask you the same thing,” Ronan replied, expression cut into a challenging glare.

“I have a shift,” Adam said. “We already went over this.”

“No, you  _had_  a shift. Because you’re a dumbass and  _should_ have called out, I just did you a solid and flipped the sign to closed on your behalf.”

“Lynch–”

“Don’t, Parrish. You’re digging your own grave right now, and you know it.”

“I’ve lived and worked through worst,” Adam bit out. He tried to roll back under the car, but Ronan still had the creeper hooked.

“Jesus, you are a stubborn bastard,” Ronan grumbled, rubbing the back to his head.

“You can leave, then,” Adam snapped.

Ronan sucked his teeth, clamping his eyes shut for a second. Adam steeled himself for the blow that was sure to follow.

Instead, Ronan exhaled, letting his shoulders sag and head fall back. “Stay,” he commanded, pointing a finger at Adam like he did to Opal when she was gearing up to run amok. He stalked over to the car next to them, grabbed the replacement tire Adam was going to attach once he’d finished his current project, and dropped in front of Adam.

And then he sat as he always did: like he was trying to take up as much space as possible, knees spread wide and arms dangling over them.

So it was going to be a lecture, then. Fucking great.

But Ronan didn’t say anything. Instead, he reached for Adam’s grease-stained hands. And Adam let him take them, let him play gently with his fingers, like he always did. They sat that way for a long while: Ronan tracing the lines of Adam’s palm, caressing the hard knobs of his knuckles, running his calloused fingertips along Adam’s.

“You know you don’t need to do this anymore, right?” he asked at last. But it wasn’t a reprimand. It was a genuine question, the harsh edge of his voice smoothed down to be gentle, and kind. While his gaze was locked on Adam’s hands, his brow was knit in concern.

Adam’s long list of counter arguments, justifications, rationalizations, and excuses–all the shit he would spit at Gansey without a second thought–stuck in his throat.

“You don’t get it,” he managed to whisper.  

“Yeah. You’re right,” Ronan conceded. “I don’t. And I probably won’t ever. But you still didn’t answer my question.”

Adam pulled his hands away from Ronan to hold his throbbing head. Rain lashed against the garage doors.

“I–,” he tried, shook his head, swallowed with a grimace, and started again. “It’s hard. School. Life. It’s always been hard, but this is different. This year is different. Everything is so much harder, and I feel so much more like I’m stuck in the deep end of pool full of smart kids and rich kids who are just so much better at this world than I am, and I…I wanted to feel…”

“In control again,” Ronan finished.

 _Knowable_.

“Yeah,” Adam said with a bitter sigh. He ran his hands over his face.

“I don’t know what I want to do next,” he admitted quietly, before he really understood the confession himself. The truth settled like a weight in his stomach. “Getting to an Ivy, getting out of this shithole, that was the plan. And I did that. But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. What I’m aiming for. And I feel like…like if I just try harder, I’ll, I don’t know, figure it out, or something. Or it just won't matter anymore because I'll have worked so hard that something will just...” he waved his hand as if presenting.  

“Does it matter that much?” Ronan asked. Again, a genuine question.

“I feel like it does,” Adam replied, hands draped over his knees and head hanging low. “If I don’t have a path, then what am I even doing? I’m just like everyone else here.”

Working hard. That had always been how Adam separated himself from the rest of Henrietta. From the lazy wealth of Aglionby. From his deadbeat father. Without hard work, without the obvious toll of labor and struggle and stress then was he any better than the people he’d always hated?

Ronan gently took Adam’s hands, and intertwined their fingers as best he could. “You’ve gone farther than most people ever will,” he said. “And you are so much better than the dipshits in this town. Trust me.”

Adam sighed. Deep down he knew he was right. It would take more than one talk to convince himself of that, but he’d get there.

They sat there for a while longer: Ronan playing with Adam’s hands, Adam trying very hard to not fall asleep on the creeper.

“You don’t need to figure out your whole life right now, Parrish,” Ronan said suddenly, his face creased with concern as he looked at Adam. “Hell, you can’t even legally drink yet. Chill the fuck out and just…stop trying to work years off your life, okay?”

Adam breathed. “Okay,” he agreed.

“Take a fucking nap every once in a while.”

“Fine.”

“Call out on a shift if you feel like shit.”

“Okay.”

“And maybe eat some more fruit, while you’re at it. Don’t want you getting scurvy or whatever the fuck–”

“I get it, Lynch. Stop.” But Adam was smiling anyways.

“You know,” Ronan said suddenly, “there are plenty of not-self-destructive ways to be in control.” He met Adam’s eyes with a wicked, crooked smile.

“In your dreams, Lynch,” Adam replied with a small smile of his own.

“Hmmm, maybe,” Ronan muttered as he kissed Adam’s fingers. He then reached across and felt Adam’s forehead with the back of his hand. “You feel kinda warm,” he said.

“Yeah, I need to go to bed,” Adam replied with a sigh of defeat.

“Then finish this shit up so we can go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Tryna keep my shiz organized, so working on collecting my Tumblr Ask fics in one place (which makes it sound like I've written SO MANY. I haven't. I just...don't like digging through my own hashtags to find my stuff.)


End file.
